Our Real Science Exchange pubcast always has leading scientists and industry professionals discussing the latest ideas and trends, and tonight we have three distinguished guests. Dr. Jim Drackley, Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, and Dr. Jim Quigley join us to discuss the weaning period and why it can be so traumatic for dairy calves.
Guests: Dr. Jim Drackley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University & Dr. Jim Quigley, Cargill
Our Real Science Exchange pubcast always has leading scientists and industry professionals discussing the latest ideas and trends, and tonight we have three distinguished guests. Dr. Jim Drackley, Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, and Dr. Jim Quigley join us to discuss the weaning period and why it can be so traumatic for dairy calves.
Dr. Drackley leads off by describing that this topic is popular because it's still a problem. The advantages of feeding more milk during the milk feeding period are clear, but there can be system failure around the weaning transition from large amounts of milk to starter. There's often some slump in growth or even calf loss in some cases. (04:40)
Dr. Drackley emphasizes the importance of a properly texturized feed, starch content in calf starter, weaning age, and feeding too much hay which leads into a discussion about the importance of butyrate over propionate in rumen development. (05:31)
Dr. Quigley tackles the idea of weaning age and rumen development, stating that research has found NDF digestibility isn’t mature until the calf has reached a threshold of about 15 kilograms of cumulative NFC intake. The latest NAHMS study suggested a typical weaning age in the industry of about nine weeks and this usually coincides with the NFC threshold (10:39)
Dr. Van Amburgh suggests that patience may be lacking when it comes to the weaning transition. Research shows taking more time to transition from milk to solid feed in a stepwise manner can lessen or remove the post-weaning performance lag. (19:41)
Dr. Van Amburgh goes on to reiterate the importance of butyrate production in rumen development and that the inclusion of simple sugars into calf starters rather than high levels of starch are beneficial. (21:26)
Dr. Drackley then reaffirms the importance of a gradual transition from milk given the cow’s natural lactation curve. A calf would be receiving less and less milk each day, not an abrupt shift to a different diet which often is not mimicked in weaning transition programs. (25:18)
Dr. Morrow gives the veterinarian perspective and agrees with the panel that a proper weaning transition program could take away a lot of the respiratory disease impacts on post-weaning performance. (27:14)
The panel shifts to speak to the long term impacts of a poor weaning transition program. Dr. Drackley emphasizes calves who experience disease have both lower longevity and lower milk production in the herd. (29:26)
Dr. Van Amburgh cites European research that showed if nutrition from weaning on didn’t achieve target body weights at certain stages of physiological development, reproductive efficiency was decreased as a heifer and as a lactating cow. (30:13)
Each panelist gives an overview of the “perfect” calf weaning program. Dr. Quigley emphasizes a slow transition with high diet quality before and after weaning (32:46)
Dr. Van Amburgh further underlines the importance of calf starter diet quality, focusing on simple sugars and amino acids, rather than starch and crude protein (37:29)
Dr. Drackley focuses on the fact that digestive tract development is allometric during this time in the calf’s life, where the digestive tract develops at a faster rate than the rest of the body. Ensuring the calf has adequate nutrition to support this growth is imperative, and is an important focus for future research. (41:37)
Dr. Van Amburgh suggests that changing the way starter is presented to calves so they know it’s feed is critical because they may not be in an environment where they can learn from others. (48:18)
The panel wraps up with one piece of advice for calf weaning programs: be patient! (50:33)
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Scott (00:07):
Good evening everyone, and welcome to the Real Science Exchange, the podcast we're leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorell. I'll be one of your hosts here tonight at the Real Science Exchange, and we're here tonight with three experts in the dairy industry to discuss the weaning period and why it can be so traumatic for our calves. First let me introduce Dr. Jim Drake Lee from University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne. Dr. Drake Lee, thank you for joining us here at the podcast tonight. And do you have anything special in your, your glass tonight?
Jim D (00:42):
Yeah, Scott, thanks for having me. I'm having a nice crisp glass of Sanair white wine from France.
Scott (00:51):
Oh, nice. Feels
Jim D (00:52):
Good on a nice warm summer evening.
Scott (00:53):
Yeah. Awesome. Well, tonight we're revisiting your very popular topic on weaning that we recently presented during the Real Science lecture series. But before we dive in, I see that you've brought a couple guests with you here to the pub. Can you please introduce those two gentlemen and kind of explain why you picked these two guys in particular?
Jim D (01:14):
Yeah. Well, I have two experts on calf nutrition, so Dr. Jim Quigley with Cargill and Dr. Mike Van Amberg from Cornell University both longtime friends of mine and, and good colleagues in area of calf nutrition. So we, we've all not always agreed on everything, but I think now we, we have a good rapport and, and I wanted them to be guests today to, to chat over this topic.
Scott (01:44):
Awesome. I, I've been looking forward to this one because you've got such a dis distinguished guest that you've invited. Mike you've been here many times. Welcome back. I think we may have to make you a host if you, if you don't stop showing up here,
Jim D (02:09):
Great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks.
Scott (02:11):
You're very welcome. And finally, I'm thrilled to welcome back our very own Dr. Peter Morrow to the table Tonight, Pete will be serving as my trustee co-host in Clay's absence. So, welcome Pete and, and what's in your glass tonight, Pete.
Peter (02:25):
Thanks Scott for the warm welcome. Well as a Wisconsin, I'm gonna represent the Midwest and the rest of Wisconsin by having an old fashioned tonight
Scott (02:38):
Yeah. Very popular drink. When we have Wisconsins on, on the podcast for me, so first I might explain, I was on vacation last weekend, Virginia Beach. I got two sons that were working down there this summer. So we decided vacation there. And there's a hotel down there called the Cavalier Hotel. It's very historic. It was erected in the twenties. And they've got a distillery inside and, and it, it's, it's called the Cavalier Hotel. And rumor has it is that moonshine was flowing quite freely there during prohibition, and so they've got a distillery on site. And so I went on a tour of the distillery, did a nice tasting, and came back with a bottle of their finest called discretion, and also bought a this is called a Glen Carn glass. I dunno if you can see that. But it's pretty cool. It's kinda wider in the middle that's supposed to be so that it'll air the bourbon and then it's smaller to top so that you can, it'll collect the aroma and you can smell it quite easily. Not that I can tell the difference smells like wood to me, but I, I must like wood. Anyway, it's very enjoyable and so appreciate having everybody here tonight. And with that, here's to a great fun and informative podcast. Cheers, everyone.
Jim D (03:58):
Cheers.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
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Scott (04:22):
So let's begin. As previously mentioned, the webinar was well received with a large audience during the webinar, and we've seen a significant uptake on our digital channels as well. So let's start with a very simple question, Dr. Drackley. Why is this topic so popular in today's industry?
Jim D (04:40):
Well, Scott, I think it's popular because it's still a problem. I think that we've figured out a lot of things in the milk feeding period and, and the advantages of feeding more milk. But where it usually fails if it does, is around the weaning transition. And I think there's still too many problems with understanding how to appropriately wean calves that are coming off of large amounts of milk. And as I pointed out in the webinar, there's, there's often some slump in growth or even worse of, of the situations where there's large numbers of calves that are dying after weaning, which shouldn't happen, but it does.
Scott (05:24):
Yeah. Would you mind maybe touching on some of those, those key causes of the pork transition?
Jim D (05:31):
Sure. I think there's a, there's a number of them. Dr. Al Kurtz contacted me as he usually does after , I make a presentation and, and suggested that the biggest cause that he sees is the pork starter quality. So starters that are too high in starch that are poor physical characteristics. So a lot of fines, poor pellet quality not a, not a good texturized starter if it's a, a texturized formula that, so that's a problem. I think there's other issues too, weaning too early. So we, we've, I think if we're feeding more milk, we need to change our mindset that we don't need to wean at, at four or five weeks of age. That starting to wean at six weeks of age and, and continuing to about eight weeks might be a more appropriate timeframe with a large amount of milk weaning to abruptly again, a couple of steps down, make the weaning more more manageable for the calf.
Jim D (06:41):
Feeding too much hay is another issue. And I know Jim and I have talked about this when experiences in China where you see big hay-belied calves after they're weaned and, and just doing very poorly. The calves don't digest hay well at all at this age. And water availability is always an issue to, to perhaps limit starter intake and stacking too many other stressors at the same time. So, you know, doing a lot of things with the calves like vaccinating and dehorning and moving and, and all the things that, that create stress on the calf. So those are the issues that I highlighted during the webinar.
Mike (07:26):
You know, I agree with everything Jim said that all, all of those things are a lot of those things are, are factors that I see currently in the industry. I don't know if I can add to anything except that I think when we look at heifers, they're still seen as heifers and calves are seen as a cost center, not a profit center in the dairy industry. And when margins get tight and they're trying to figure out how to shave a few cents here and there, the quality of the diet presented to some of these animals is not what we'd like it to be. And I think that's where we get ourselves in trouble. I'll just stop there for now.
Scott (08:07):
Yeah. You know, one of the interesting I things I found Dr. Ley in in your presentation was that you talked a little bit about Mother Nature's plan, and you kinda laid out all the things that she does, and, and then you kind of superimpose that against what we do, and it doesn't match up very well. And I'm one kind of curious as to why, and, and, and one of the specific questions I had is, you know, when when the baby calf starts eating dry feed, it's, it's, it's grass, right? It's high in sugars and high in very digestible fibers. And, and yet you talk about we're feeding calves hay. That's not very digestible. And I'm kind of curious where the disconnect is. And then the follow up question would be, should we be raising or growing hay that's specific for baby calves? I said a lot there
Jim D (08:56):
That's the question. Yeah. We can come back to that one. I, I think the, I, Mike knows, I'm a big fan of teleology , so I, I always like to think how, how did we get where we've gotten and is there a reason for it? So I just made the point that Mother Nature would've had the system with Spring Calvin Cows, where the first feed that the baby would consume would be fresh, lush spring grass that, as you said, is very high in sugars. And sugars ferment to butyric acid to a larger degree than other substrates. And URIC acid is what drives room development. In terms of the fiber, it is not very highly lignified. It's easily fermentable. So as the microbial population is getting established, it's still not, not extremely digestible in terms of the NDF, but it's more digestible than the dry haze that we often feed at the same time.
Jim D (09:58):
And then the other issues with, with mom, you know, the milk is, is 25 to 26% protein. The mother is feeding several times a day and, and as much as the calf wants to drink and weaning, of course, was at a much older age, and then we typically wean dairy calves. And if we think about the beef system that's, that's closer to, to probably how our dairy cows evolved as well. So I think the issue of do we need a specific hay groan for young calves is an interesting one. I'll throw that back to my colleagues for some comments. Maybe
Jim Q (10:39):
I'm, I'm I'll, I'll try to address that. But before I do, just one comment about weaning and weaning age. You know as Jim, you said that mother nature doesn't plan for us to wean cabs at four or five or six weeks of age. And, you know, in the industry, if I remember right, the last nom study suggested that dairy farmers are weaning on the average somewhere around nine weeks of age. Yeah. And you know, back in, back a few years ago, we published a paper that showed, suggested that digestibility of, particularly NDF isn't mature until the calf reaches some level of, of NFC intake, which tends to drive room in development. We've done a series of models to, to look at when that actually occurs under different feeding programs high concentrate, high milk feeding, et cetera.
Jim Q (11:31):
And it's very rare that we get to that break point of 15 kilos of cumulative NFC intake before nine weeks of age. So, it's almost like the producers who, you know, who are feeding and looking at the calves every day, have sort of have sorted, sorted that out kind of on their own. That seems to be somewhat of a sweet spot, particularly when we get to feeding, you know, 7, 8, 9 liters of milk a day prior to weaning. So I think I think that that that idea that, you know, we wanna wean as early as we've traditionally done is, is at least part of the of, of why we're here today, But, but to the, to the issue of forage and, and you know, highly high, high lush forage, if we would call it that the the availability of, of simple sugars and, and rare readily fermentable carbohydrates are a really big deal.
Jim Q (12:31):
I, I'm not quite so sure what the rate of fermentation of those lus forages would be, and whether we can maintain room pH with, with that type of feet. That's something that I think would be interesting for us to talk about too, because, you know, if we're feeding any kind of N D F that needs to be fermented, and we need to be able to maintain a reasonable room pH in order to do that. And, you know, I think another one of the issues that we often face with young calves is they're fed these high concentrate diets. Even with forage, we often see room pH is quite low and you know, with a limited amount of in DF digestibility. So, so but but I think it's an interesting idea to, to, to offer the, these, these types of, of very lush forages. But I'd still be a little concerned about how, how are we controlling pH and n df digestion.
Peter (13:31):
Can you tell us a little bit more about the, the, what appears to be a break point around the 15 kilograms of N F C intake to, is that a hard, fast number that tells us, you know, what, what, what does that tell us if they have that amount? They are rumen should be developed adequately, or could, could just expound a little bit on that?
Jim Q (13:54):
Sure, sure. Well, we did some, some meta-analyses of a series of digestibility trials. We did, we did over the last seven or eight years. And we looked at the change in, in dry feed nutrient digestibility, protein, fat, NDF starch, et cetera. And what we found was, particularly for NDF digestion, that early in life when the room is not developed, it's kinda logical, NDF digestibility would be quite low. And what tends to drive that is, of course, room development, the availability of the room bacteria to ferment the NDF, that's in the, that the calf consumes. And as we did these analyses, we looked at intake, but also cumulative intake of dry matter. And, we also looked at NFC and starch digest starch intake, and the cumulative consumption of NFC seemed to be what was most important to the change in NDF digestibility. If you pull that back to, to, to real life, what that seems to mean is that NDF digestion is driven by, by the overall exposure of the calf to, to starch and sugar and room and development, if that, you know, if that's what it's, so, I, I, I don't know that we can actually hard and fast say that this is an a, a complete indication that the calf is ready to be weed. But certainly before that time,
Jim Q (15:29):
If, if we're, we're feeding less, if, if the calf has been exposed to less than 15 kilos of, of, of NFC intake, the digestibility of fiber of NDF will be lower than it would be after the calf gets to 15. So that's kind of the idea.
Peter (15:45):
Okay. So that is a more of a, a bacterial or ruminal bacterial or microbe component. Is there a component of enzyme induction there too? Whether it be amylase or, you know, lipase induction by the calf,
Jim Q (16:00):
When we looked at starch digestibility, there was much less of a relationship with, with cumulative, an cumulative n c intake. And I, I think that that may be because it's less directly related to, you know, overall rumen development than say, the development of the pancreas, for example, and, and, and amylase secretion. So, so, I, I, to answer your question directly, I'm, I'm not a hundred percent sure, because we didn't, weren't able to correlate those two things, enzyme induction and, and digest and digestibility. But remember, we did look at total tract digestibility, apparent total tract digestibility. So, you know, anything downstream from the rumen would also be contributing to that, to that digestion. But we're assuming that the majority, thinking about N D F now the majority of the digestion of N D F or the, the disappearance of N D F is gonna happen in the rumen.
Jim D (17:00):
Yeah, no, the French data from years ago would show that the amylase and other carbohydrate digesting enzymes in the animal develop fairly quickly after birth, so that as the animal is ramping up its intake a calf starter, it's probably able to digest a good portion of the starch in the intestines so that it's not surprising that the relationship is, is not as strong in, in gym studies.
Scott (17:29):
Yeah. Dr. Quigley I'm gonna assume in your current role, you, you're on a lot of dairies, and I'm kind of curious what are some of the more common mistakes or problems that you see dairymen making today and then, and, and what would the cause of that be?
Jim Q (17:46):
Oh, I've, yeah. I've had the opportunity to travel around the world and see, see dairy dairy production and the interest in, in increasing and in trying to optimize the milk feeding program is definitely there. It's the, it's, it's the reduction of milk offered and that kind of glide path down to weaning. That seems to be the, the, the, the stumbling block. If you'll have lots of, lots of calves are getting lots of milk, but they're not ready to be weaned when, when the, the producer decides it's time. And unfortunately, I see that a lot of places, a lot of places calves will get 8, 10, 12, 12 liters of milk, and they're doing great. They look wonderful
Scott (18:41):
And, then what would be the key factor leading to that? Why are producers not doing better with that? And what, what can they do? What should they do?
Jim Q (18:49):
Oh, my. I wish I had an answer for, for you. I think there's lots of things. I think we, you know, the, the answer is we need to have, we need to, to really understand that, that transition phase from high levels of milk down to weaning, and, you know, how do we step that down so the calf is still getting enough energy to, to, to grow during that transition phase, but, but at the same time, move the calf from, from from, from milk feeding to, to starter and allow enough time for changing microbial populations. The development of the digestibility, like we were talking about, there's lots of so to, to answer your question, I, I, I think we, that understanding that transition program down to weaning is, is a really big deal.
Mike (19:41):
Yeah. I, I would add to that. So to that point, I think Jim Drackley said this earlier, and, and Jim Quigley just agreed that we need some changes there. I think the timing of weaning is a big deal. And the we're not patient enough. Yeah. Right. To Jim's earlier point, if we're gonna feed high volumes of milk, then we need to give 'em more time. And, and in all that, we, you know, I haven't done as much calf research the last few years as I once was, but we, we just published a couple studies in the last couple years where, you know, we took, we were up to we were up to 12 liters a day. They were consuming 1.5 kilos of milk, replacer powder
Mike (20:35):
On the weaning phase. We had a starter that was developed for this procedure. To Jim's point is we need a way to do that. You know, and what we found is if we took more time, we actually could wean them off of a very high milk milk replacer intake level and not have any real post weaning lag. Actually, no post weaning lag and intakes were adequate. But there's a bunch of things that have to play into that, right? Jim's earlier point about Jim Drake's Jim d and Jim Q.
Mike (21:16):
The one with the beard and the one without the you know, that ha having enough having sugar in the diet, right? Sponsoring some butyrate formation, I think is really important. And I think that's, if there's something right now, I, I could, this could go on for a while, but if there, if there's any, anything that I think people have forgotten, or younger scientists or industry professionals seem to have not reinforced somehow, and that is the idea that butyrate is what drives women development, not prop. And I can't tell you in the last five years, in talking to a variety of people how many of them seem to think that propionates what drives room production? So somehow they figure out that they gotta get more starch into these diets. And I'm thinking, boy, you're already at, at very high levels of starch, they're pretty dangerous, right?
Mike (22:14):
If you think about an adult cow. And so why are we trying to push more starch in them when, when, you know, Jim's theological argument would be you were supposed to get a bunch of sugar in there to get some butyrate production, and that's how that was supposed to develop, right? So I, I see that as a real hangup right now in the industry, because starch is relatively inexpensive. We can offer it in just about any form you want to
Peter (22:51):
So you're saying they need more formulation towards simple sugars than opposed to the simple starches that we could probably get our hands on a little easier.
Mike (23:00):
That's the way we're approaching it. Now, our, the, the starters that we're building here now, that in, in our research are roughly 15% sugar and about 20% starch
Peter (23:12):
And sugar, the glucose source or
Mike (23:16):
Dextrose lactose, I don't, to me, it doesn't, I wouldn't use sucrose in a calf, right. That would not be productive. But I think, you know, and you'd love to use molasses, but man, that would be way too much molasses. You'd have a brick. So,
Peter (23:32):
But you know, they've been feeding lactose to swine, right? In those weaning diets for years. Maybe that's a good use of our, you know, lactose from the dairy industry.
Mike (23:42):
I, you know, Peter, I would love to think so, I, I get told by, by all of our processors, how do we get rid of this lactose, right? We got all this lactose, we don't know what to do with it. So when I tried, when I try to build these starters, I'll say, well, you can, you guys add lactose? And they said, yeah, we can. I said, what's it gonna cost? What's the same as dextrose? Well, if we're really trying to get rid of that much lactose, why is it the same price as dextrose? Right?
Jim D (24:27):
Yeah, back to, back to Scott's question and the, you know, what, what are producers not doing? I think, as Mike said, reinforced that, you know, a couple of steps down or more time. And I think that's just, that creates another management link on the farm that makes it just that much more complicated. And we know that farmers don't like complicated systems, with good reason. But I think it's just Mike used the term lack of patience. And I think that's a great way to describe it.
Scott (25:02):
I'm kind of curious if maybe even technology or emerging technology, we might be able to employ some of that, whether it's, I don't know, feeding machinery, monitoring systems. I don't know what it is, but I'm kind of curious if anybody's working on something like that for transition dairy gas.
Jim D (25:18):
Back to, to Jim's point, you know the, if you look at the lactation curve of the cow, there is a normal natural reduction. And assuming we're not talking about a howling cow producing 110 or 120 pounds of milk a day, but, you know, maybe, maybe an Angus that's producing, you know, peaks at 14, 15 pounds a day, that rate of reduction is a gradual rate of reduction every day. And it's a, but it's, it's a small, it's, it's a small bits. And, you know, if you have an auto feeder program, you could set something up like that, follow a, follow a curve and, and have a gradual reduction. Instead of taking a calf from 12 liters of milk a day and doing a one step reduction, you know, 12 to six liters. That's, that's a lot of energy and that's a lot of protein.
Jim D (26:07):
All of a sudden the calf doesn't have anymore. And, you know, at, if the calf is gaining a, a kilo a day you reduce the, the, the energy and protein intake by, by almost 50% what's going to happen? Do you, do you, you get down to the point of maintenance at that point, you know, with that kind of a reduction. You know, and so, so, you know, perhaps a part of this is to, to the point of, of impatience, you know, if we are reducing too much from these high levels of milk the, the, the decrease of, of energy intake or protein intake are probably just manifesting themselves in a lot of stress.
Scott (26:50):
Pete, as you were a practicing D V M, so you've seen the other side
Peter (27:14):
You know, without question, Scott the complaint or the call would be my ween calves are crashing. I, I, you know, weed calves are terrible. Especially if we, you know, inquire what's, what are the problems going on in the area? Well, my ween calves do terribly. Why is that? They break with respiratory disease, can't buy enough antibiotics, right? Mm-Hmm.
Peter (28:10):
And, and it was pretty profound in my practice experience to try to, if we could, you know, improve that calf program, this, the transition program, would, IM improve dramatically. So it, it's, it's, it continues to be a problem, though, in, in, in the industry. But I think the, the dairies that have, or the calf ranches that have put the efforts into customizing their program, you know, doing the work to Jim Drake Lee's point, you know, it's a little more complicated, but the folks that are able to do that, you know, extend the weaning period, need once a day for a week, maybe two weeks you know, step down, step down, the amount of milk offered I think it makes a pretty dramatic difference.
Scott (28:54):
You know, some of the short-term problems are, are, are pretty obvious, you know, you got mortality, morbidity issues with the, the, the heifers and then having to treat them. But can, can somebody talk maybe about some of the long-term impacts of an inadequate transition period? You know, what, what does that do to the, the, the longevity? What does it do to lifetime productivity? What's it do to, you know, we talk a lot about epigenetics to calves on down the line. Anybody wanna take that one on?
Jim D (29:26):
Well, I think that, you know, there, there were data from years ago that showed from an epidemiological standpoint that, that calves that have illness, particularly respiratory disease have a shorter longevity in the herd and produce less milk as, as adults. So, I mean, that's, that's been clearly established that disease is a negative has a negative impact on subsequent lifetime and, and productivity. And I think that can be extended to even a, a, a difficult transition or a, a slump where you have a, a, a stress on the calves that's maybe doesn't break with clinical disease, but still has the same long-term effects on the calf.
Mike (30:13):
Yeah, there, there's there's a series of papers you have to read hard to find some of this. 'cause It's not always obvious. There's a paper that just came out of Europe where they clearly showed that, you know, from weaning on, if you didn't get the nutrition right, which then related to body weight at a particular stage of physiological development, you know, reproductive efficiency decreased, you know, as a heifer, and then again as a lactating cow. So, so there are data out there to, to that point that, you know, what we do during these phases does have a long-term impact. It's just not always obvious. And the problem with some of that work, Scott, and is that having enough numbers of animals where you've actually got records and data to be able to follow that is really hard sometimes. But where they do, where you can find adequate data, you will always find some long-term impact. It's just not always as obvious as you'd like it to be.
Scott (31:09):
Yeah. Those are
Mike (31:10):
Hard studies to run.
Scott (31:13):
Yeah, without a doubt. But my, my, my guess and assumption is that, that if you could monetize what those penalties are in terms of milk production and longevity and the herd that it would well offset any kind of investment we put into our calves, whether that's in investment in time and facilities, and, you know, just kind of going back to the whole education thing and, and doing things better. 'cause There really is value there. Anyway, I'll get off my my pedestal.
Mike (31:41):
Well, to, to that point. Well, you know, we can stay on that for just a little bit. If you were to take a, a kind of a higher level view and look at some of the highest, and a few of us have done that, unfortunately, we've never accumulated the information into something that's tangible like a paper. But if you take a look at the highest performing herds in the country, you will also find that the best calf programs right? You will not find a poor calf program and 35 and 40,000 pound cows, right? But those two things are generally mutually exclusive. So, so if you look at some of these high performance herds around the country, those are the herds that also have pretty good calf programs one way or another.
Scott (32:25):
Next question, I'm gonna kind of throw it out to the group, and I am gonna start with Dr. Quigley on this one is, so if you were designing, if we had the magic wand, we were designing the perfect calf program. Oh my. What does that look like? What are those key elements? I know this will take a book, but you've only got about you got about 90 seconds.
Jim Q (32:44):
Okay.
Jim Q (32:46):
Well, well, clearly the the idea that that as, as we improve the nutrition of the calf pre and potentially post weaning, that has positive impacts on, on on, on future performance and, and longevity suggests that, you know targeting growth rates to eight, 800 grams of, of body weight gain a day or more prior to weaning. I, I think having flexibility around, around weaning age, and, you know, if we're offering a calf eight or nine liters of milk a day or milk, milk replace or equivalent, then we need to be, we need to be targeting the reduction and without any data. We've, we've been, been kind of thinking about step stepwise reductions no more than about 25% of what the calf is receiving. So at four, at eight liters a day, it's a two liter step, a two liter step, a two liter step down.
Jim Q (33:46):
So that, that that we give the calf enough time to increase dry feet intake or all of the metabolic changes that are gonna take place inside the calf changing microbial populations in increasing digestibility, et cetera. All of those things can take place. Now, I'm, I'm talking about a perfect program, and maybe this would be difficult to implement on the, on the farm because there would be multiple steps of a reduction involved. I, I, I think the, the availability of fermentable carbohydrates prior to weaning to promote room development is really important. And the ratio of, of, of simple sugars to, to starch and, and other NFC, I think is something that we need to sort out. And I appreciate Mike and Jim's comments about that, that you know, getting back to the basic biology of what's driving room and development, well, it's, it's those VFA and particularly butyrate that are important.
Jim Q (34:43):
So let's make 'em, you know? And the, the idea of digestible NDF early in the life of a calf, to me, is something that's difficult. I, I have a hard time with that. So, you know, lots of, lots of, of high NDF byproducts in a calf starter are for, for me, I, I think that idea is, is, is can be somewhat of a challenge just because calves are gonna struggle to, to digest, to get all of the energy, particularly out of those, those, those those byproducts. So, you know in all the, the modeling work we've been doing nine, 10 weeks of age at weaning time, moving from, from eight to nine liters, liters of milk or milk equivalent a day down to weaning at nine or 10 weeks of age. We see minimal minimal indications of, of stress as, as we calculate it. So, to, to me, that that seems to be a kind of a program that, that could work on a lot of dairies if they have the patience as we as we've been talking about here to implement the program.
Peter (35:50):
Do you think of along those lines, do you think it'd be valuable to along with trying to ferment and create some butyrate to actually feed one of the butyrate products, whether it be in milker replace, or where else, wherever a avails be avail, it'd be available.
Jim Q (36:05):
I've not seen, and maybe maybe Mike and, and Jim can comment as well, but I've not seen where adding dietary butyrate, you're, you're gonna be able to provide enough or in the right, in the right proportions to, to make a much of a difference to, to the actual development of the room in the room and wall or absorptive capacity. You guys have you seen anything to, to suggest one way or the other?
Jim D (36:32):
No, I, I think there's, there's not a lot of data that have actually looked at rumen development. There's probably more information that it seems to have a positive effect in the, the lower gut. Yeah. Which, you know, that can't discount that either. But as, but in terms of rumen development, I, I don't, as you said, I don't think we can probably feed enough to enough to really stimulate that. What do you think, Mike?
Mike (36:58):
No, no. I, I agree with that. I, i, there's not enough, I don't think we can feed enough butyrate to really drive room development. Yeah. But, but to Jim's point, the lower gut seems to respond quite well to that butyrate, which is a positive, right? Because you're gonna enhance you know, mucosal development, things like that. So you increase the barrier create a better environment for the rest of the commensal bacteria. So that's, that's all good. General,
Scott (37:24):
Mike, you wanna take a crack at the creating that perfect transition calf program? I'll,
Mike (37:29):
I'll add to what, what Dr. Quigley started out with. So I agree with everything that, that Jim Quigley said. What I'd add to it, and again, this is from our modeling, our own modeling work relative to a CNCPS type thought process. I think one of the other things that's going on with these calf starters, and Jim Drake, Lee and I have had this conversation over and over again, but I think we finally sorted it out. You know, if you think about mom's milk on a dry matter basis, those, our holsteins, even though milk protein tends to be increasing, we're, we're in that 25 to maybe 27 protein range. So, you know, which also, if you, if you go to the new NRC requirements, you know, we're kind of in that 25 to 26% crude protein range when you think about these higher growth rates.
Mike (38:28):
So as we're gonna go through this transition phase to Jim's point, we're gonna take time to do that. And, you know, and he, and he made the point about going from 12 liters to six liters or eight liters to four liters, you're basically putting them into a maintenance type function. You know, so we've got two things going on. You've got the energy to allow for normal function, but then you've also got the protein, and that RU'S not developed yet. We're not going to have a lot of microbial yield, and we have to make a gastrointestinal tract that's very protein intensive. Doesn't have a lot of adipose tissue, it has a lot of mucosal tissue and some muscle. So when you think about having to build that tissue and you think about how this, what the next priority for nutrient use is going to be in that calf, it's going to be what we all want is we want them to build that gastrointestinal tract.
Mike (39:24):
Well, that's gonna take a bunch of energy, right? Butyrate would be the priority in some proportions. And we're gonna need a bunch of amino acids, right? So I think one of the other, I will argue that part of our post weaning lag is that we don't supply enough amino acids in our starters to meet those requirements for tissue development. So, it's not only getting the carbohydrate side of that worked out in that, in that in your accounting system, but it's also meeting the protein. You know, once you create that energy demand, you've gotta supply the amino acids to allow that tissue to grow. So I will argue that post weaning lag is not just a carbohydrate problem, but it's also an essential amino acid deficiency. Yeah. And we have not sorted that one out very well. No. And our own, our data, our internal data would say that those calves at probably about 80 to 90 kilos would require about 13 grams of methionine a day. Right? And then you could go from there all the way through. We don't, we're not talking about that
Peter (40:51):
We're still talking about crude protein on calf starters and grower diets, right?
Mike (40:56):
Exactly.
Peter (40:58):
And as far as that goes a lot of folks are, well, I feed a 16. Why is that? Because it's cheaper, right?
Mike (41:04):
Right? It's cheap. Exactly. That's
Peter (41:06):
Why I feed, there's, there's no dietary goal there, or at least no producer perspective,
Jim D (41:11):
But we're investing a, we invest a lot of money feeding, feeding these high quality milk, milk, replacers, but then transition them onto to a, you know, 16% coup protein cal starter that you know, maybe, maybe doesn't have the, the quantity of, of Yeah. Everything to Caffe amino acid wise to, to support it. So, you know, penny wise and pound foolish sometimes
Mike (41:34):
Of the, I think that's exactly Jim, where I think we're stuck. Yeah.
Jim D (41:37):
One of the interesting things that came out of Jennifer Stamis' work that we published a couple years ago was, there we go, was just kind of re I, I should have known better, but it hit me that the digestive tracts growth is, is allometric during that winning transition. You know, we always talk about thephase of mammary development, and that's, that's something that's pretty widely taught, but the digestive tract increases at a faster rate than the rest of the body during this winning transition. So to Mike's point, you know, a lot of those nutrients, which may be in a shorter supply to begin with, are gonna be directed toward the gut development during that time. And the other thing that that is important to remember is the influence of gut fill on the average daily gain. In, in those studies that we did between five weeks and 10 weeks of age, gut fill accumulation was almost a half pound per day, quarter of a kilo a day just in accumulation rate of, of digestive within the digestive system as the tract enlarges. And so if we're measuring, you know, if, if the calf slumps to 600 grams per day of, of body weight gain 2,250 grams of that are gonna be gut development. So we're really slumping on the, the development of the rest of the body. So I think that you know, there, there's a huge amount of, of stuff we need to know yet about that, that transition time.
Scott (43:15):
Yeah. So that kind of leads to kind of the next area I kind of wanted to cover is what does the future look like? What's it look like in terms of research? What are some of the, the, the largest unanswered questions yet? Whether that's nutrition facilities anything. I know that's pretty wide open, but got some smart guys here.
Jim D (43:35):
I'd like to, to narrow down that, that time timing, the sequence of development of the, of the GI tract. You know, just how, how quickly are those changes occurring? And, and on what period of time are we really talking about this enhanced development? I mean, we, we've got some clues like, like Jim's work with cumulative intake and so on. But just to, to know better the time course of some of these changes, I think would help in our, our modeling efforts.
Jim D (44:07):
I would add to that the, the understanding, the, the, the dynamic, dynamic changes that are taking place room wise. You know, as you think about the models that we currently have and our ability to predict nutrient flow, you know, a big black box there really still is, is the amino acid flow microbial wise. And, and, and from, from the, the r u p fraction, we don't have a lot of data that suggests that, that, that allow us to predict reasonably things like the kd, the rate of passage or, or, or the rate of digestion of, of various feed fractions and so on. And the, the, the young rumen is, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's changing not only in terms of metabolic activity, inability to absorb pfas, et cetera, but also in size mm-hmm.
Jim D (45:33):
Some of the best work we have on that was by Dr. Quigley when he was a graduate student. And that's been a while.
Jim D (45:40):
it's been a while. For sure.
Mike (45:44):
Well, just real quick, the hard part is who's going to fund that kind of work today? Yeah.
Mike (45:50):
Right? I, I'm, I, I would like to do, I've got a grad student interested in some of this calf work, man, nobody, you know, if it doesn't say methane somewhere, it's a really hard, it's a really hard lift right now to find enough money to actually do a good mechanistic study. Yeah. Right. Because it's not cheap or inexpensive. I'll use inexpensive.
Jim D (46:18):
Yeah. The marker work you need to do to be able to, to follow the various component flows and so on, or, yeah. That's, that's heavy lifting. Yeah.
Scott (46:29):
Gentlemen, as we begin to wind down here, is there any big rocks that we've left? Unlifted, Jim, we cover pretty well. I think
Jim D (46:36):
We've touched on most of the areas both from a science aspect and a practical basis.
Scott (46:45):
Okay. Very well then I'd like to ask just a few questions that were asked during the, the webinar. And one of them has to do with calf socialization, which I don't think we we touched on yet today. But the question is, is feeding calves in pairs or the buddy system still recommended? This was a bit of a hot topic for a while, but I haven't heard much about it lately.
Jim D (47:11):
Yeah, I think there's a I'm not sure how widely it's being adopted, but from a, just a data standpoint, it looked like there the whether it's competition or facilitation of having group housing encouraging to better dry feed intake at a young age. So I think there would be an advantage from that standpoint.
Scott (47:39):
All right. Next question is do you have any tips to stimulate early calf starter intake in pre weaned calves? We kind of touched around that a little bit.
Jim D (47:48):
I'll let you guys address that one. I gave my best effort in the webinar, but that's the million dollar question.
Jim D (47:58):
Well, an easy answer is water. That that's a, a key driver and something people forget a lot
Peter (48:04):
And still a common problem. As long as we've known that calves need free access to, you know, of high quality water it's, it's still a problem having that happen in the field.
Mike (48:18):
Yeah. I think there's some simple things we can do. We probably need to change the way we present starter to calves, not in some bucket that's, you know, as big as their milk bucket all at the bottom. They can't see it. They can't really see it and understand that that's supposed to be feed. We know it's feed, but they don't know it's feed. Then there's nobody to teach them back to the buddy system. There's nobody to teach them that that's actually food. One of the things that we sorted out in our auto feeding calf barn is we recognized that if we had some of the older calves in there, that they were consuming starter, that they encouraged the younger guys to, to go eat. Right? So that idea of, of learned behavior, 'cause mom, mom would teach the dam would teach the calf how to eat, right?
Mike (49:01):
Some of that pasture, or they just learn by watching. There's probably, again, I think some of the intake inhibition is partially due to we just feed too much starch or it's presented in the wrong form. Too much dust. Particle size is bad, right? We don't wanna spend money for, for something that, you know, is a little more palatable. So when they breathe while they're trying to eat, they get the stuff up their nose and they say, Hey, that, that burns, and I don't wanna do that. So there's a bunch of these little nuance things that I think play into this, again, it's management, right? And it's not, you gotta work at it, but I think it's, it's all those little things that add up to this problem.
Scott (49:42):
Yeah. Very well, thank you for that, Mike. Well, my, my Glen Karin is empty
Speaker 5 (50:09):
Tonight's last call question is brought to you by NitroShure Precision Release Nitrogen. NitroShure delivers a complete TMR for the rumen microbiome, helping you feed the microbes that feed your cows. To learn more about maximizing microbial protein output while reducing your carbon footprint, visit balchem.com/nitroshure.
Jim D (50:33):
Absolutely. Be patient.
Scott (50:34):
Yeah,
Jim D (50:36):
We talked about it already, and I think the idea of being patient and, and understanding the, the, the reductions to, to minimize stress during that time would be would be a, a big win for, for the producer and
Scott (50:48):
For the cat. Yeah. Great point. Glad you put an explanation point on that. Dr. Van Amberg, what are your thoughts? Yeah,
Mike (50:55):
Yeah, I'd second what Jim just said. Learn to be patient and have a system and think about starter as a nutrient delivery mechanism, not just something that you gotta put in front of 'em to eat. I think that that is a bit of a, you know, if we can buy the least expensive thing and put it in front of 'em, they should be fine, because that's, that's, they got something to eat, right? I think we have to think more about nutrients. It's the same. My, my take on that is that is somebody who works on a nutrition model at one end of the farm, they wanna know how many grams of methionine and lysine got to the mammary gland that day. And at this end of the farm, we can't get it past a crude protein metric. Right? And it's the same animal, just different stages of development. The irony of that, to me is crazy, right? But anyhow, yeah.
Jim D (51:45):
Yeah, I think I'd, I'd echo the, the same theme as my two colleagues and, and I would go to, to Pete's point that he made today, that, that you know, you clinicians and, and farmers see the result on the farm. They see calves that are struggling around weaning. And to Pete's point, you can make it go away if you just are a little more patient and, and do a better job of transitioning. So I think the incentive to do it ought to be there both in the short term and in the longer run. Going back to, to Mike's comments about looking at it as a cost center rather than a profit center. So I, I think we've, we've done a good job of emphasizing that point. We haven't done a good job, sorry, of, of emphasizing that point.
Scott (52:38):
Yeah. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Well said. So this has been an interesting one. Been a fun one. I knew it would be Dr. Ley when you put together this panel. You guys have been great. So I want to thank all three of you for your, your, your time, your knowledge, your contribution to the industry, and to the conversation tonight. And to our loyal listeners, thank you for coming along once again as you do on each episode and sticking with us as we explore new topics. We hope you learned something. We hope you had fun, and we hope to see you next time here at the Real Science Exchange, where it's always happy hour and you're always among friends.
Speaker 5 (53:15):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anh.marketing@balchem.com with any suggestions, and we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five star rating on your way out. You can request your Real Science Exchange t-shirt in just a few easy steps, just like or subscribe to the Real Science Exchange. And send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to a h.marketing at balchem.com. Balchems real science lecture series of webinars continues with ruminant focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month. Monogastric focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month, and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment. Visit balchem.com/realscience to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.